Susie's ward baby shower

For those of you who don't know this, Susie and I live in the same ward. She and Brent live in Brent's parents' house while they are serving as mission president of the Albania mission. John and I live in the mother-in-law apartment attached to my parents' house. With that explanation out of the way, it's a little easier to understand why I would host a baby shower for Susie and invite 140 women from our ward. That's right. 140. Every woman in the ward. Because that's how they do it in our 'hood. My mom and I purchased paper, embossing tools, and ribbon and proceeded to make 140 embossed pink and white invitations by hand. It was several evenings' worth of work (plus John and my dad helped, too.) Then we delivered them all. Then we cleaned the entire house (including my apartment, which everyone has now had a personal tour of). Luckily, there were sweet women who volunteered to help and took over all the food preparation. It was a lot of work but totally worth it! Susie got a lot of darling stuff and enough money contributed to a group gift to buy a new crib!

A beautiful hand-crocheted blanket

Me, Susie and Michelle(another cute girl from our ward who lives in her missionary parents' home with her hubby)

Susie and her cute mom, Margie.

Opening one of the cutest dresses I have ever seen!